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The new life

DAVID MAYOR
Learning to ride a bike is something of a virtue: the day when your father takes his hand off the saddle he is teaching you the rules of balance. And a gateway leading into this world that consists of following the invisible thread of life without too many scraps and scrapes is located in the Parque Grande in Zaragoza; many girls and boys still learn the skill of the two wheels and balance there. “Now right to the end of the world”, I hear a father say -my own, yours, anyone’s- while he stops and you carry on, with wobbly balance, forever more on your own on your bike.
Today, while you walk along the top near the statue of the Batallador (Alfonso I the Warrior) to be amongst the clouds, you remember that going to the park as a child meant hiring a bike – nearly always half an hour for twenty-five pesetas – and testing your sense of balance: exploring the trails along by the Huerva River looking for the woodpecker that was never there, going as far as the Rincón de Goya just as one reaches the beginning of time, passing the star of Rubén Darío and staring up at the sky, imagining that the Centaur Chiron gave you the best counsel, that Neptune jumped off his pedestal and with a tap of his trident filled the park with seawater. Today, here in the clouds, I have remembered that my father taught me how to ride a bike, that balance is the best virtue.VIDEO-VOICE BY DAVID MAYOR